MLB Hot Stove: With teams locking up young talent, a good free agent is hard to find

Dream on this Yankee fans: Just when your favorite team needs offense and corner help this winter, Evan Longoria, long-time Yankee nemesis, would be a free agent!

Only he's not.

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The Rays locked up Longoria with two contract extensions long before he would've been eligible for this market, part of the ongoing trend that folks around baseball say has thinned the pool of players available to the highest bidder. Free agency has always been risky business; nowadays fewer stars get there in their prime and that makes it more difficult for teams needing a quick fix — the Yankees? — to find one in the market.

Sure, there will be a few high-ticket items out there this offseason — pitchers such as Max Scherzer, Jon Lester and James Shields, and big bats such as Nelson Cruz and World Series champ Pablo Sandoval.

But, as one baseball executive puts it: "More and more, the way everyone looks at it, the free-agent market is not going to be there as much."

"There aren't as many quality, younger free agents out there," adds another baseball executive. Both spoke on condition of anonymity. "Teams are keeping their guys, signing them to extensions. The numbers to choose from are less and less, so free agency is not always the answer."

Longoria, Clayton Kershaw, Elvis Andrus, Jay Bruce, Homer Bailey, Brett Gardner and Clay Buchholz are among the players who could have been free agents this winter had they not signed extensions. Andrew McCutchen, Gio Gonzalez, Wade Davis and Alcides Escobar highlight the list of potential free agents after the 2015 season who are already off the board because they signed extensions.

Former Cleveland general manager John Hart, who was just hired by the Braves as president of baseball operations, is generally credited with starting the trend of signing younger players to long-term deals before they hit arbitration. He helped build the powerhouse Indians of the 1990s by locking up core players such as Sandy Alomar Jr., Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome and Carlos Baerga.

Teams continue to look for ways to buy up the primes of their young stars. "It's security for the player and, in some cases, less commitment for the team," one of the baseball executives says. "Sometimes the player misses out. Sometimes the team misses out."

Before last season, the Braves worked out extensions with Freeman, Kimbrel, shortstop Andrelton Simmons and starter Julio Teheran worth a total of $267.4 million.

Of course, players risk signing for fewer dollars than they might have earned with a boffo free-agent deal. They make that concession as a hedge of sorts against their performance sagging, injuries or a fickle marketplace. But they get life-changing money in return. And they still have a chance to hit the market at some point, just later in their careers.

Still other players have soared to such heights on the field that they're not signing for less to grab some security — they're reaping the rewards of outsized performance without needing free agency's leverage.

"Most guys would rather take the Buster Posey approach — have good years, sign for free-agent money without being a free agent," says Tim Dierkes, the owner of MLB Trade Rumors, the popular website.

Posey, the San Francisco Giants' star catcher, signed a nine-year, $167 million extension in March of 2013 that has a $22 million option or a $3 million buyout for 2022 when he's 35 years old. He's one example in a list that includes, among others, Felix Hernandez, who is locked up until at least 2019, and Mike Trout. Trout could have been a free agent after the 2017 season had he not signed a six-year, $144.5 million deal that kicks in next season.

Signing a long-term deal before free agency is something the player has to decide upon, with the help of his agent. "It all comes down to how an individual player feels about his given situation, his career, family and decides what the best avenue is to follow," says Joe Bick of Pro Star Management who negotiated the four-year, $52 million extension that Gardner signed last February.

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"We do everything we possibly can to give every guy as much information as we can. It's never all going to be perfect, because of the circumstances. Teams are signing guys early because they feel like they're saving money doing that. The interested observer might say, 'Well, why not let everyone go to free agency and take their chances?' Some guys are willing to do it and risk more than other guys. That's not my decision to make; it's the players' decision to make."

One of the club executives notes that as much as baseball has changed over the years, including the explosion of stats and analytics used to judge players and build teams, "player evaluation is still the most important way." The evaluation process now extends to picking which young star should get a big-money offer to stick around long before he's backed by the power of the free market, allowing smaller-market teams spend their money more wisely.

Of course, the best free agents still represent something scarce — huge talent. And clubs will still pursue them. They will just be fewer big names to cull.

As Dierkes puts it, "I feel like a lot of executives think of free agency as a necessary evil. Certainly, the options are reduced."

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SEE YA LATER

Here's a look at some of the top players in baseball who would have been free agents in the next five years but won't be: